


come and find me when the walls come crashing down

by CallMeBombshell



Category: Marvel (Comics)
Genre: F/M, nothing explicit though, warning for alluded-to underage sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-08
Updated: 2012-05-08
Packaged: 2017-11-05 00:47:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/400047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CallMeBombshell/pseuds/CallMeBombshell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For all that she's known him for years now, trained and sparred and fought with him, in so many ways he is still a stranger to her. She doesn't know where he comes from, or how old he is. She doesn't know where he first received his training, although she does know that he was already deadly when his handlers got a hold of him and made him into something even more (or less; that's another one she has trouble telling apart sometimes). Sometimes she asks, and he never answers, doesn't even dodge, just looks at her with inscrutable eyes until the point is made and they move on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	come and find me when the walls come crashing down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [defcontwo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/defcontwo/gifts).



> Written for her prompt [here](http://hariboo-smirks.livejournal.com/301452.html?thread=2516876#t2516876): _bucky/natasha, we found love in a hopeless place_.
> 
> Warning for underage is because Natasha's 17 and fully consenting to hinted-at sex.

The walls of the Red Room's training facility are the same dirty grey concrete everywhere she goes, no variation, no break, just long stretches of unadorned, cold grey. It's institutional and claustrophobic, and it's easy to get lost in the winding mazes of identical corridors.

Natasha is seventeen and has never been lost in her life. 

(sometimes she thinks she's been lost all her life; sometimes she not certain there's a difference) 

The training room Natasha uses most of the time is the third left from her room, down a long corridor, right turn, second on the right behind a bland steel door, painted grey just like the walls. The inside of the room is just as bland, white padded mats lining the walls and the floor, gymnastic equipment set in a circuit around the open practise space in the middle. It looks just like every other practise room she's ever been in, clinical, practical, cold. 

As she approaches, she hears the squeak of the bars, the solid pounding of the vault horse, the slap of hands and feet against the mats. 

The man is older by a few years, and he's got more than a handful of inches on her, but he's not like the behemoth who first taught her to fight, nearly seven feet tall and built like a bear. No, this man is slighter, close-fitting sleeves outlining arms made up of lean, corded muscle. He moves gracefully, vaulting over the pommel horse and swinging immediately up onto the higher bar on the set, swinging up and over and landing with a roll ten feet away. Natasha watches from the door as he straightens, rolling his neck and shaking out his arms. 

"You could join me," he says without turning. "If you wanted." 

Natasha shrugs, even though he can't see it. "I am fine just watching you." 

The man turns to face her, one corner of his mouth turned up in something that might have been a smile in another life. "You say that every time." 

"And I will say it again," Natasha tells him, and she means it; he is a thing of beauty when he's in motion, all coiled, muscled grace and iron strength  (or steel, depending on which arms he's using, but that's another matter entirely, and one which she's never certain how to handle, whether to be impressed by the advantage or frightened of it's implications)  and he reminds her of a wolf, perhaps, or a cat, all dark hair and dark eyes that she thinks used to be brighter.

For all that she's known him for years now, trained and sparred and fought with him, in so many ways he is still a stranger to her. She doesn't know where he comes from, or how old he is. She doesn't know where he first received his training, although she does know that he was already deadly when his handlers got a hold of him and made him into something even more (or less; that's another one she has trouble telling apart sometimes). Sometimes she asks, and he never answers, doesn't even dodge, just looks at her with inscrutable eyes until the point is made and they move on. 

(sometimes she wonders if he even knows the answers to those questions himself, if he lies awake at night and asks himself the same things, where he came from, how old he is, where he learned to do the things that have made him such a legend, even if only in whispers) 

He has many names, is called  _soldier_  and  _operative_  and  _weapon_  and  _success_ . He is called Red, and X, and demon. He is a pronoun, soldiers whispering together when they talk about  _Him_ . 

Inside her head (never outside of it, not even to him, because this is Russia and the military and there are always people listening), she calls him the name she heard him use, once, talking to a young boy only hours from dying from severe burns. She doesn’t know how he knows his own name but not his age, doesn’t know if it’s a lie, just something he made up to tell a young boy who asked to know before he died. 

Now, watching him unwind the thin wrapping from around his hands, sweat beading slightly at his temples, chest rising and falling evenly, she wishes she could use it out loud, just once, just to see if it would make him tense, if it would make his breath catch, if it would matter to him in some way. 

"And yet,” he says, stretching out his arms, his back, watching as she follows his motions, loosening her muscles for their session. “You came here for something more than just watching me run through routines." 

"Training is important," she says, and if she’s mostly saying it for  _them_ , the nameless, faceless eyes and ears who she knows are watching her, well. That’s her prerogative. She is seventeen and faster, stronger, better than anyone else she knows, with one exception. 

She’s not naive, and she’s not stupid, nor is she idealistic or blind. She is being trained to be used as a weapon, and here she stands in a room with a man who has been nothing but a weapon for as long as he can remember. It is no coincidence and no convenience that she has been told to train with him, against him. She is the upward-moving pride and joy of the Red Room, and he is her final test, the favoured child of Department X. 

The day she can best him is the day she becomes invincible. 

She doesn’t let herself think about the probability that she is being raised to kill him someday, doesn’t think about whether she might falter if she was ordered to put a knife to his throat and cut, doesn’t think about whether she might flinch if she was told to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. She doesn’t think about the two of them together, partners, working together and watching each others backs, ten steps ahead of anyone who might want to stop them. The Red Room trains operatives just like Department X, single, solitary, alone. There are no partnerships from either of them. 

But until then, she is his to train and to spar with and to fight in tandem with, and she intends to take full advantage of that time. 

He stalks over to her, movements slow and deliberate. She takes a few steps forward so that when he reaches her it's easy for him to guide her backwards again, back towards the wall to her left, out of sight of anyone passing outside the door. 

It's not the first time they’ve done this, taken these moments and twisted them, obeying the letter of their orders and not the spirit. Their orders say that he’s meant to train her in advanced hand-to-hand combat, showing her how to grab and hold, how to get away, how to use her body as a weapon. 

And he does. He holds her down, pins her wrists and her hips and her legs, lets her work to break free, pressed his body against hers as leverage and makes her work to flip them, to pull her arms free so that she can grab hold of him, so she can twist his arms so that even with his metal advantage he can’t move away. She learns how to use her body against his, learns to wrap herself around him, to use his body against him so that, in the end, she finds herself above him, upper hand clear, her hand at his throat and ready to squeeze, or cut with a knife, both of them gasping and sweat dripping between their bodies. 

She doesn’t sweat with anyone else; but then, she doesn’t love sparring with anyone else the way she loves it with him. 

(and that’s a word she’s only just learning to understand, only just learning to think of in terms of herself, tasting it on her tongue but never saying it out loud for fear that it will mean something different on the air than it does inside her head, something like  _safe_  and  _solid_  and  _sacrifice_ , and she’s not sure how she feels about any of those things, dangerous and liquid and self-contained as she is) 

She loses track of time when they fight (and that’s a lie; she always knows, down to the second, but when she’s with him she lets herself ignore it for a while), loses herself in the motion and the rhythm of it, skin on skin and his pulse pounding in his neck against the skin of her wrist where she’s got her arm around his neck. She focuses on the weight of him on her hip, her back, the force behind his arms pinning hers. She gives him her full attention, her full effort, her full ability, and watches him nearly-grin when he realises she doesn’t want him to hold back. 

(and if she sometimes wishes she had something else to give him, something softer and sweeter and more fragile, well; she’s pretty sure he already knows, because he kisses her, just once, nothing more than a quick press of his lips against her, warm and soft for a moment and then gone, and his eyes when he pulls back are more human than she’s ever seen)

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Tin Man](https://archiveofourown.org/works/400989) by [indigostohelit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit)




End file.
